"SSH, Neto, Blynken, & OOF": Every year I try to do something special for my birthday.  I've learned from my mistakes, from the years when I didn't do anything special, or, even worse, worked for a living - it might've been 2018 when I had to work because I couldn't afford to be retired & I told a coworker it was my birthday & he didn't even wish me a happy one, what a depressing day.  Given that I never expected to live to be 70, my age now, & certainly don't expect to make it to 80, turning 70 seems like a milestone & I decided to treat it that way.  I'm almost out of money & my Social Security is less than $800 a month so my ability to travel under anything better than impoverished conditions is almost at an end.  As such, I arranged what was, for me, a somewhat 'luxorious' 'last gasp': a trip to 3 state parks in 3 contiguous states: Golden Hill State Park, New York; Pennsylvania's Grand Canyon (where it ultimately seemed more convenient to stay in a hotel); & Dillon State Park, Ohio.  Golden Hill was chosen because it contains the Thirty Mile Point Lighthouse where I was able to rent what was once the assistant lighthouse keeper's 3 bedroom apartment & to arrange to do some moviemaking in the decommissioned lighthouse itself.  Special thanks to Mike & Marty at the park for enabling this latter.  I asked at least 7 friends to join me at the lighthouse & beyond: 3 to be musicians, 3 to be actresses comedically portraying 'mediums' & one to be the medium's bodyguard.  All but one of them declined.  Fortunately for me, Eric Lipsky brought his talent to play for a day at the lighthouse.  Eric's contributions added an enormous amount & made the greensuit scenes come to play in a way that would've been almost impossible without him.  Originally, I was just going to call the movie, created mostly spontaneously, "70" - a simple title meant to evoke: "I'm 70 now & still alive & kicking".  As the movie took shape, however, I decided that a seemingly more nonsensical title was more in keeping with the somewhat stream-of-consciousness flow of the scenes.  I have an exhibit upcoming at a small gallery in Pittsburgh in a month & I had had a large stencil made for a 20' X 2' painting I made that reads "I refuse to pull the WOOL over your eyes."  Having extra canvas left over & wanting to continue to use the commercially made stencil, I made a list of anagrams that could be made from the available letters in the original stencil & chose some more nonsensical words to paint onto a 20' X 11" canvas.  This canvas then became a sort of magical carpet for the movie.  I chose 2 of these for the title: "SSH" & "OOF".  I brought along a book entitled "Death From Surgical Complications: Rudolph Valentino, Stonewall Jackson, Douglas Macarthur, Andy Warhol, Eddie Bracken, Ingrid Bergman", an 1,154 page resource of extreme value to me as a critic of the Medical Industry.  Turning rather lazily to what I thought was the 1st entry I picked that of Agostinho Neto, an Angolan revolutionary who managed to get Angola out from under the yoke of Portugal.  His last name became the 2nd word of the title.  In Wellsboro, where the hotel was that I stayed in to be near the entrance to one of Pennsylvania's Grand Canyon main parks, I was impressed that there's a public sculpture based on the poem for children entitled "Wynken, Blynken and Nod", the names of the 3 children in the poem who go on an adventure using a Dutch wooden shoe as a boat.  I chose "Blynken" to be the 3rd word in the title.  Nonsensical as it all may seem, it adheres together in my mind in a way that interests me.  A large part of the movie centers around playing battery-powered electronic instruments in environments where such (m)usic wouldn't ordinarily be found.  All in all, I made quite a bit of work for myself & my lonesome 70th birthday was pretty sad (I slept through most of it) but I've made an experimental documentary that I think is quite extraordinary despite it all - & it helps me to perceive my life in a more positive light.  Premiered here for the 1st time in any movie of mine are the Rollmonica, a 1928 harmonica played by a roll (similar to the way a Player Piano works), & the Dungchen, a telescoping 6' Buddhist horn.  Fanciers of instruments might find these particularly interesting.  As usual, the nature spots, such as Watkins Glen, went a long way toward pleasing me. 

- September 11, 2023 notes from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

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